\u201cTo me, moving the game to a different venue, to a neutral venue, is an absolute cop-out,\u201d he argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cChanging the venue doesn’t change the facts that Israel is engaged in the starvation, the bombardment, the bombing, the mass displacement and the slaughter of the Palestinian people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael are engaged in genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2KC80XB.jpg\")
The Israeli flag outside its former Embassy in Dublin. Picture by: Arthur Widak\/NurPhoto.<\/p>\n
The Dublin Mid-West TD added that the issue goes far beyond normal politics and has become a \u201cquestion of humanity\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added that previous sporting and cultural boycotts have had a powerful impact on countries committing human rights abuses.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes a huge difference,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve seen in the past where the apartheid regime of South Africa, when people refused, countries refused to play sporting games, fixtures against South Africa, how that impacted and changed that regime in South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘Selective-based outrage’<\/p>\n
Also on the programme, former Justice Minister Alan Shatter rejected Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s assertion that Israel is guilty of human rights abuses against the Palestinian people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lunacy surrounding this football match, initially created by Irish Sport for Palestine, now being run by a subgroup called Stop the Match, is utterly and completely and totally insane,\u201d he argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m personally completely fed up with the attempt to sabotage every aspect of Irish Sport and bring issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m personally sickened by the prejudice, the escalating antisemitism, the selective-based outrage based on false narratives.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The former Fine Gael TD added that a boycott would do nothing to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe boycotted Eurovision – it had no impact of any description on anything to do with anything that’s happening in the Middle East,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe now want to self-harm Irish football.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Alan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/G47H8F.jpg\")
Alan Shatter during his tenure as Minister for Justice.<\/p>\n
Mr Shatter also condemned the \u201cselective outrage\u201d over Israel, noted that Ireland recently played Qatar – a country whose treatment of migrant workers is often compared to slavery.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn August, the Irish cricket team is playing Afghanistan,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen in Afghanistan under the fundamentalist Taliban regime are invisible – they’re neither seen nor heard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMedical doctors in parts of Afghanistan, who are men, will not provide medical assistance to pregnant women.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s no protest about the cricket matches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin has said if Ireland does not play against Israel it could have \u201csignificant implications\u201d for the Irish team’s future prospects.<\/p>\n
He added that he does not want Ireland to “unduly suffer as a result of anything that may happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Main image: Alan Shatter. Picture by: Leah Farrell \/ Photocall Ireland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alan Shatter has said if Ireland do not play Israel in the UEFA Nations League it would be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-490346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}